


As If the Last of Days Were Fading

by roaroftheninth



Category: True Blood
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Headcanon, M/M, Past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 15:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roaroftheninth/pseuds/roaroftheninth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The universe is a thing much more colossal than it should be, isn't it?" Godric sounded as though he spoke mostly to himself. "Even a handful of centuries ago, it was just a thin, starry veil over Heaven."</p>
<p>Or: A collection of Godric-centric one-shots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. As If the Last of Days Were Fading

**Author's Note:**

> This is what it says on the tin - a collection of Godric-centric one-shots that I wrote about three years ago and posted to FF.net. I'm transferring them over in case anyone needs a Godric fix (sometimes you do, ya feel?)
> 
> Comment if you'd like; this is my first foray into the True Blood fandom on AO3 and I'd like to meet you lovely people.

Godric sat down at one end of the long conference table. Nan stood beside him, impatient, as her assistant went through a stack of papers and explained briefly what each one was for. Godric nodded politely, but he wasn't really listening. Without looking, he could tell that Eric waited by the doorway, a powerful figure tense with contained rage. Godric had spent centuries trying to teach Eric this kind of self-control, with little success. He had apparently learned it in the sixty-odd years since they had seen each other last.

"You'll have to initial in each of the places I've indicated with an 'x'," the assistant said, breaking into his thoughts as she pushed the mountain of paper toward him, "and sign on the designated lines."

Godric accepted a pen imperiously offered to him by Nan and dutifully began to fill out the paperwork. There was more of it than he had anticipated, but as the minutes ticked by he never spoke or wavered from his task. When at last he finished, Nan gathered up the papers and handed them to her assistant, who swiftly slid them into a briefcase and strolled out of the room. Nan went to follow, but found her way blocked by Eric.

"Eighty-four signatures?" He inquired, his voice dangerously soft. The sub-text was implicit:  _Was the intention to humiliate him?_

"Mistakes were made," Nan said, deliberately misinterpreting his question. "Costly ones. Let's just say that firing him is the least we should be doing."

_The least?_ Eric's eyes betrayed his fury.  _As if they think they could do worse without starting a civil war._  "I should rip your head from your body and leave you in the sun to burn."

Had Nan been human, she would have flushed. "There are laws that apply to our kind, Sheriff." She glanced back sneeringly at Godric. "Even in Texas."

"The Magister might give me a century in a coffin bound with silver," Eric said coolly. "But you would still be dead."

They gazed at one another for a long moment.

"Eric." That was Godric, who was still sitting at the table with his back to them. He only uttered one word, but his tone spoke volumes.

Eric immediately stepped aside, allowing Nan to pass.

"Control your dog," she snapped at Godric, her words weighted with disgust as she swept out of the room.

There was a brief silence as the door closed behind her, leaving child and maker alone together.

"There was a time when you would not have tolerated that with so little bloodshed," Godric remarked, sounding vaguely approving.

Eric brushed off the faint praise, striding forward so that he could see his maker's face. "There was a time when  _you_  wouldn't have, either," he returned. "She treated you like a misbehaving child and  _you let her_."

Godric's mouth twisted upward on one side into a shadow of a smile. "You have always had a lot more respect for me than I deserve."

"Self-deprecation doesn't suit you," Eric responded flatly.

Godric's gaze dropped to the glass table. Through it, he could see his own white-clad knees. Beyond that, the pattern in the carpet was red and gold flowers, curling in on one another.

Eric couldn't sit through another one of Godric's interminable silences, which had been occurring with growing frequency as of late. "Did you think I wouldn't come looking?" he demanded harshly, changing the subject without warning.

Godric wanted to say that he didn't know what he'd thought, but that was too easy. Eric deserved better. "I hoped that the news wouldn't reach you until it was too late," he replied honestly.

Eric felt a tightness in his chest. "I don't understand."

"I know," said Godric, and at last he looked up, searching Eric's face. "Most vampires are so because they wanted to die. Their makers could sense that, and acted on it. I made you for precisely the opposite reason. You wanted so badly to live."

Eric sat down abruptly in the chair recently vacated by Nan's assistant. "Life is all there is.  _Survival_  is all there is."

Godric smiled. "You believed in Valhalla, once. In going home to rest at the end of a long journey."

Eric felt like something basic and fundamental was slipping away from under him. He struggled for purchase. "This isn't the end of your journey.  _It isn't._ "

In a flash, Godric was kneeling in front of him, cradling his face in his hands. Eric gripped Godric's wrists and shut his eyes. He let the cool hands against his cheeks be his anchor to a world that was spinning rapidly out of control.

"Eric," Godric said gently, "I have traveled a long time."

Eric's grip tightened on his maker's wrists. He would have long since snapped his bones, if Godric were the teenager he resembled.

"You know that," Godric continued, laughing a little, like a father trying to coax a smile from an upset child. "You have travelled with me the longest of anyone. I don't think I have ever mentioned how immensely grateful I am for the honour." He paused. "I can't think of adequate words in any language we have spoken to express how much."

Eric did not speak.

"You know what you are to me," Godric said softly, but with more conviction than he had been capable of kindling for years. He pulled Eric's face down gently until their foreheads rested against one another's. "More than fellow traveller. More than father, brother, son; more than lover, more than co-conspirator, more than closest friend, though we have been all of these things and others."

"You can't go," Eric whispered. "I still need you."

Godric closed his eyes tiredly. "Not anymore."

" _Always_ ," Eric insisted. He pulled away, and when Godric opened his eyes they immediately locked with Eric's, leached of colour and red-rimmed in a way Godric had not often seem them even though they'd spent lifetimes together.

"No," Godric said, a little more firmly. He rocked back on his heels, feeling restless. "You haven't needed me for centuries. I should have released you a long time ago, but I was selfish."

"I have never felt the least desire to be released," Eric replied, his voice oddly flat. "I would never ask for that."

"I know," said Godric. His smile was bittersweet. "I am grateful for that, too. You have been too good to me."

He rose easily to his feet and Eric followed suit. They stood not six inches apart, a distance that would have been awkward had they not been so utterly comfortable in one another's company. Godric tilted his head back and met Eric's unsmiling gaze.

"Think of all we have seen together," he said quietly. "I will get to visit the only place I've never been."

Eric wanted to lash out, to shake him and strike him and  _hurt_  him until he was firmly grounded in this world again. The only thing that stopped him was the utter certainty that at that moment, Godric would let him.

"Do not expect me to be happy for you," he said coldly. Godric knew him well enough to read the rage in his voice and in every line of his body.

Eric broke eye contact and stepped around his maker, leaving too much space between them. Godric let him go, not turning around to watch him leave the room. When the door shut behind him, the sound of it was loud in the silence.

Godric felt too heavy to move.  _Forgive me,_  he thought helplessly.

Eric wouldn't, not until long after Godric was gone.


	2. Vegetarianism

Godric has fed, for once. Isabel can tell because there is the lingering odour of fresh blood in the corridor, though without the usual accompanying tang of sex. She refrains from rolling her eyes at how pious Godric has become.

She knocks respectfully on his door and he opens it instantly. She has never quite gotten over how fast he is. She is about to speak when she notices his t-shirt.

In wide, green letters, it reads:  _VEGETARIANS DO IT BETTER_.

She is speechless for only a second. "Vegetarians, Godric?" She has gotten very familiar with him, as of late. It is not long ago that she would not have dared to be so bold.

He looks down at the shirt, as though he has forgotten that he is wearing it. When he looks back up at her, he is smiling crookedly.

"I wanted ' _I DON'T EAT ANYTHING WITH A FACE_ ', but that would be lying."

Every time Isabel thinks she is starting to understand him, he does something that makes her realize she has barely scratched the surface.


	3. A Long Time Ago (and Far Away)

Godric can sense the wolves prowling in the darkness, though he cannot see them. The vampire before him silently watches him weigh his options. Eyes like pale stones glitter in the dark.

Godric looks up. The moon is full. For some reason, it makes him uneasy. "What do you want of me?"

The older vampire chuckles. The sound is out of place on this bitter winter night. "This is my territory. You should mind that tone." He smiles, but it fails to reach his eyes.

"I am passing through," Godric says. He does not normally feel the need to explain himself, but most of those who stand in his way are easy to dispatch. This vampire is old, so Godric treads carefully. "I will be a long way from here by dawn."

The pale-eyed vampire's smile broadens and his eyes wander downward. "You were born into slavery," he remarks, sounding as though the idea doesn't displease him.

Godric looks down at the blue ink that curls around his body. "You are mistaken," he says, an edge in his voice. "These are the marks of a warrior."

"That one isn't," the other vampire says softly, his eyes fixed on Godric's shoulder, as though he can see right through it to the brand on the other side.

Godric looks down, too. "No," he says. "That one isn't."

The pale-eyed one smiles. "Not born, then. Sold." He draws out the word spitefully, as though he knows the shame it still stirs up after all this time.

Godric's eyes are hard. "I was not easily taken." The warning is implicit.

The elder vampire stares at him for a long moment. Then he erupts into laughter that he cannot seem to take control of. There is a faint warning of madness in it. Godric longs to be away.

At last, the laughter subsides and the vampire wipes the back of his hand against his eyes, smearing bloody tears across his face. "I could keep you as a pet," he says.

Godric tenses. He will fight to the death, if he has to. He has been owned before. It is not an experience he will repeat.

The pale-eyed vampire is still grinning. "How fortunate for you that I travel light." The wolves press closer in the dark winter night. Godric can smell filth and rotting meat. "Don't come back this way," the other vampire continues. "I'm never generous twice."

By the time Godric realizes he has been granted a reprieve, the other vampire is gone. The wolves are slower to follow suit, but eventually there is a far-off howl, and all is quiet.

Godric puts a hand to his chest, a reflex action to calm a racing heart that does no such thing. Wasting no time, he vanishes, too.


	4. Monsters and Victims

" _History is nothing except monsters or victims. Or witnesses,_ " Steve Newlin said, quoting from somewhere. Godric was sure he had read it before, but he couldn't place it. Nevertheless, he knew that Newlin had it wrong; that there was no such thing as a person who was solely one thing or the other.

"I don't think that people are so easily put into boxes, Mr. Newlin." He was always polite, but distant; sometimes, Newlin wanted to shake him.

"No?" Newlin asked, smiling indulgently. He was often guilty of treating Godric like the young man he resembled. "I think  _you_  can be. Tell me, how would you refer to yourself?"

"Oh, I am without a doubt a monster," Godric replied. "But I have been other things, too."

"A witness, I'll buy," Newlin said, though the tone in his voice implied that even that was hard to swallow. "But a  _victim_?"

Godric studied him for a moment. "Mr. Newlin – how do you think monsters are born?"

"Why don't you enlighten me?" Newlin asked, sounding like someone waiting for a humorous punch line.

"Well, of course you know how vampires are made," Godric replied, ever courteous. "I was murdered. Many Makers acquire consent before undertaking the ritual. Mine did not."

Newlin let his surprise show in his voice. "Oh, I don't know if I'd use the term 'murder'."

"He held me down in the dark and let me bleed to death," Godric said. There was nothing in his voice to indicate that he was recounting a personal tragedy; he might as well have read about it in a newspaper. "If you have another term, I invite you to share it with me."

Newlin shook his head. He was at a loss, so he changed tack. "Regardless, this –  _Maker_  didn't turn you into a full-blown serial killer."

"No," replied Godric, smiling humourlessly. "I did that all on my own."


	5. He'd Never In His Life Seen So Much Sky

"I loved a human once."

Bill was nonplussed. Godric stood in the gloom by a darkened hearth, his face cast in shadows. It was impossible to read his expression, but there was an odd trace of warmth in his tone that the other vampire would not have predicted. Unsure of what to say, he did not reply.

Godric seemed used to silence. It was true, Bill reflected, that no one in his presence for many centuries had dared  _not_  to listen; he now took the acknowledgement of others for granted.

"She had black eyes," he continued. There was an odd edge in his tone, the grief of a very old man threading through the voice of a very young one. "Deep and dark and clear. I looked into them and it was like drowning. Like giving in to sleep."

Sookie's eyes were warmth, drawing him in, but Bill understood anyway what Godric meant. He knew what it was like to be with someone you loved and to feel like you belonged nowhere else.

Something stirred inside of him. "What happened to her?"

Godric was quiet for so long that Bill wondered if he had overstepped. He did not apologize, but braced himself for the sheriff's reaction.

To his surprise, when Godric shifted and the shadows across his face were altered, Bill could see that he was smiling. The effect was unearthly; it would have given away his age even to someone who did not know what he was. "I wanted to turn her. She told me that a lifetime would have to be enough for me."

Bill couldn't help himself. "Was it?"

Godric's reply was soft and steady. "Could it ever be? Come back in sixty years, and you will not need to ask that question."

With anyone else, Bill would have been furious. But Godric was the only one he had ever met who had lived this to its bitter conclusion, and Bill wanted to push even though it would hurt. "I won't let Sookie die."

"That will not be your choice, in the end," Godric replied. There was kindness in his voice. Oddly, that made it worse. Bill could not bring himself to speak.

Noiselessly, Godric went to the window. When he looked out, Bill looked out too; the sky was clear and strewn with stars.

"The universe is a thing much more colossal than it should be, isn't it?" Godric sounded as though he spoke mostly to himself. "Even a handful of centuries ago, it was just a thin, starry veil over Heaven."

The night sky was the only thing that never changed. Bill had a great deal of respect for that. "It is lovely."

Godric turned to him. "I see only dead lights in a void."

Bill looked away.

Godric moved away from the window, restless. "A vampire should always have an affinity for the stars he was born under," he remarked. He prowled the room, a dim silhouette in the moonlight. "I think I have walked this world too long."

Bill wondered why Godric told him this. Perhaps he was the only one who could be told who would not try to convince him that he did not, and could not, feel as he did.

"What will you do?" Bill asked, genuinely curious.

Godric stopped, having arrived back at the window. He rested his palms lightly against the glass and leaned close, as though yearning to break through. Bill, used to Sookie doing the same in the mirror after she brushed her teeth, half-expected a circle of fog before he remembered that Godric did not breathe.

"Do you ever miss the sunrise, William?"

If the question took Bill by surprise, he did not show it. He shook his head, and though Godric's back was turned, he knew the elder vampire sensed it. "Maybe someday," he said. "Not yet."

"Ah well." Bill got the feeling that Godric had moved on from him, gone somewhere else in his thoughts. "The world is too well-lit now. The night is not the abyss it once was."

"No," Bill agreed. He turned to leave, sensing that the conversation was over.

Godric remained at the window, thinking of another night like this one, too many centuries ago and far away.

" _You're leaving." Eric's tone was very faintly accusatory. Had Godric not known him well, he would not have detected it._

_Godric inclined his head._

" _I'll come with you," Eric said immediately._

_A shadow of a smile crossed Godric's face. "No. You have things to attend to here."_

" _Then stay."_

_He had never hidden anything from Eric. "I'm sorry. Rome holds very few good memories for me."_

_Eric could only look at him, eyes flat._

_Godric laughed, a father to a child making a mountain out of a molehill. "The world is young, Eric. We will see one another again."_

The world was still young. But without appearing to, and without realizing exactly how or when it had happened, Godric had grown old.

Close by, he heard the door click quietly shut behind Bill, leaving him alone.

He shut his eyes. After twenty centuries of travelling the width and breadth of the earth, it was time to go home.


	6. Sookie

When Godric heard her screaming, he was fourteen again, wholly alive and twisting viciously against bonds that would not give. Her voice was his mother's, and his sister's, and for him their cries went on and on until their voices gave out and then they died making no sound at all.

"Godric – it's  _me_  – "

Gabe thought he was toothless and docile, a pet who grew attached to the humans who held him captive. Godric could barely contain his revulsion. In the twenty centuries of his existence he had killed often and brutally, but ending a life for the sake of survival was nature. Other moral lines should not be so freely crossed. The fate of his loved ones had taught him that.

Godric looked dispassionately into Gabe's wild, panicked eyes and thought:  _You are not fit to live_. Killing him was akin to putting down a rabid animal. Godric took no pleasure in it.

He turned to the woman, who was flushed and dishevelled but unafraid. He marvelled at her bravery, though a cynical part of him wanted to call it foolishness.

"You should not have come."


	7. Small Towns

Godric was looking forward to moving on. He didn't feel the slightest resistance to change; after all this time, no matter where he went, he had been there and seen everything before. He would also not be overly upset to leave behind the quiet hostility, half-hidden but decidedly present, that had been simmering here since he had declined the Kingship of Texas.

When he announced his decision, no one seemed surprised. Isabel nodded once, decisively, and Godric could tell that she was already making plans for the move. Stan, however, looked less than thrilled.

"What is it, Stan?" Godric inquired.

"Just don't know how I feel about Dallas, is all," Stan mumbled, while Isabel rolled her eyes.

"Dallas," Godric repeated.

After a few seconds, Stan realized that he was waiting for an explanation. He shrugged. "I was born in a small town."

There was a lengthy pause while Godric considered this.

"And you can breathe in a small town?" He inquired at last.

Stan grinned slowly.

Isabel rolled her eyes. "Pop culture references, are you serious - "

Stan started to laugh.

"Sometimes I swear that the two of you are twelve years old," Isabel sighed.


	8. The Diner

He sits at the same table every evening, in the diner that is just a few blocks down from his house. Godric likes it here because it is usually empty at the time he prefers to come, and because everything from the worn tablecloths to the tired waitresses seem, like him, to be a throwback to another era.

His favourite waitress is Irma, who competed in beauty pageants forty years ago. Her grandchildren live out of state and don't visit her. She has never asked if he is a vampire, though since they came out of the coffin, she has stopped asking him whether there's anything wrong with the coffee he always orders but never drinks. She seems to accept what he is, probably because she carries a great sadness and so does he. They are kindred souls.

Tonight, Irma is nowhere to be found. Instead, his waitress is a young lady with a tiny silver crucifix around her neck and too-new, squeaky rubber shoes. She almost spills the coffee all over herself in her haste to bring it to him. She is apparently new because she hasn't yet acquired the sulky shuffle that the other waitresses have adopted. Godric smiles encouragingly at her, but she does not meet his eyes.

He takes a rolled-up newspaper out of the pocket of his jacket, which is hung over the back of the chair, and spreads it across the table. He takes it in turns to read a variety of different newspapers, because he finds the evolution of human politics fascinating. Last night, it was the New York Post and Newsweek. Tonight it is the Washington Times, and the New York Times if he gets around to it. He is consistently amused by the different viewpoints they offer.

The papers take quite some time to get through, and Godric orders another coffee each time he senses the young waitress glancing his way. She does not ask why he continues to order coffee that grows cold next to him, but he sees her fingering her necklace nervously and knows that she has guessed the truth of it.

When he finishes his reading, he folds both newspapers neatly and leaves them on the table, as is his custom. Wrapping his hands around the most recent mug of coffee, he finds that it is still steaming and briefly enjoys the heat that seeps into his fingers. He knows that his waitress is trying to hover without appearing to, apparently worried that due to his status as a minion of evil, he is going to leave without paying his tab. So, he is not surprised when she makes an appearance as he is putting his jacket on.

"Thank you very much," he says, and holds out a tip worth twice what his bill comes out to. The waitress looks briefly startled as she takes the money; her fingers brush against his, and he knows that she was not expecting his hands to be warm.

He smiles. It is residual warmth from the coffee cup, but warmth nonetheless.

"I hope you have a lovely evening," he tells her. He does not need to turn around to know that she is watching him all the way out.


	9. How Strange it is to Be Anything at All

He stopped in the doorway.

Godric, who had not, to Eric's knowledge, ever been snuck up on by anyone, didn't seem to notice his presence. Eric found it intriguing.

He crossed the room silently and stood behind his Maker, looking over his shoulder at the notebook sitting before him. It was blank.

"I left it too long, Eric," Godric said, very quietly. He was apparently aware of his progeny after all.

"Left what?" Eric asked. Something in the elder vampire's tone made him uneasy.

"I meant to leave a record of my mother tongue," Godric explained. "There were not many scholars outside of the walls of Rome. It is not documented anywhere else."

Eric waited patiently for the rest of the explanation. He wanted to reach out to him, but Godric's sudden fragility warned him away.

"I have no recollection of it at all." The words seemed to be ripped from some place deep that Godric had never intended Eric to see. He smiled humourlessly, completely at a loss to express the ache in his heart. "I suppose I was naive to think that it would always be with me. I haven't spoken it in millennia. There was no one left with whom to speak."

Eric realized that he had never asked Godric about his native tongue. It had never occurred to him, so fluent was his Maker in the Old Norse Eric learned at his mother's knee.

"I am sorry," Eric said, and he meant it.

Godric understood. His smile was bittersweet. "So am I."


End file.
